Business Directories

Almarai adopts hi-speed storage solution

Dubai, September 10, 2008

Saudi Arabia's Almarai Co, the largest dairy company in the Gulf, has implemented the Middle East's first Solid State Disk (SSD) high-speed storage solution by STME, a leading enterprise IT solutions integrator in the Middle East.

Typically, Almarai handles over 34,000 customers daily through more than 1,000 sales vans scattered in six countries in the Gulf region. This translates to an average of 1.5 million records each day, which are gathered from various remote sources and processed in its central office in Riyadh.

In the past this information was summarised based on a few key parameters, but evolving market dynamics have increased the need to analyse the information based on a broader range of metrics and within faster time intervals.

STME's SSD-based solution dramatically improved Almarai's performance in managing the enormous data it received daily by up to 18 times, subsequently boosting the DSS ability within Almarai's sales division, said an official.

'The Almarai project was distinctly challenging because it had never been previously attempted in the Middle East. In addition, the size of Almarai's operation and the amount of data the company processes on a daily basis was another significant challenge,' said Jocelyn Adwani, deputy chief executive officer, STME.

'From the outset, we knew that storage was not the primary problem; the key was for us to develop a way to improve performance. STME provided the critical support to help us get through this complex project and achieve the results that we had wanted,' said Tanseer Kunjan, business systems manager, Almarai.-TradeArabia News Service